The Carval HR Software Blog

You know that having integrated Payroll and HR Software would make life a lot easier, but in order to secure the budget you will need to put together a very clear argument for how the investment will benefit the business.

Here we look at the things that you should consider when constructing your business case.

Managing change

Reducing costs

Increasing productivity or reducing headcount

Improving data accuracy & availability

Reducing risk

1) Managing change

Successfully implementing a new Human Resource or Payroll system requires not only money but a great deal of planning, time and commitment. But before undertaking this process it is important that you are very clear about your objectives.

HR Software can drive efficiencies and also provide some very valuable analytical data. However you need to be realistic about what you are going to do with the information once you have it.

If your company has policies in place and, as a result of having better metrics available, you discover that they are not being adhered to, who will be responsible for ensuring that they are actively enforced?

It is very likely that not just the people within your team, but across the wider organisation, will have to make changes to the way in which they work

2) Reducing costs

Whether your motivations for new HR software are driven by a desire to improve service, reduce risks or drive efficiencies, calculating how it could impact the bottom line is going to be fundamental to your argument.

The frustrating thing is that if you had decent Human Resources software this process would be rather simple, if you do not then it will require some investigation and possibly extrapolation to get the figures together.

Calculate the impact of employees not adhering to policies or managers not enforcing them.

It is quite possible that you already have some inkling as to where the profit leaks are in your business. Use this knowledge as a starting point. We would suggest investigating things like:

Expenses

Absence

Lateness

Overtime

Breaks

Calculate the man-hours that could be saved across the business entering, reconciling and searching for data.

Ask key people to keep records and extrapolate. You could include things like:

Entering timesheet data

Reconciling timesheet data for payroll

Entering expenses

Duplicating data entry across HR, Payroll, H&S and Finance

Chasing authorisations

Putting together reports

3) Increasing productivity

Once you have a clearer picture of where time could be saved, you will then need to consider what value-added activities employees could be completing in the time they would have spent entering, reconciling and searching for data. Depending on their role this could be, for example:

Strategic HR activities

Team management activities

Role-specific activities

It is highly possible that you will be quite shocked by exactly how much time is spent each pay period collating timesheet data and reconciling it.